


your words back out loud

by 28ghosts



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 13:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10594680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: How Chirrut Imwe meets Baze Malbus, and how Chirrut gets his mantra.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pisan_Zapra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pisan_Zapra/gifts).



> Prompt: How they first met, and exploring the Whills’ Force religion. This was really fun to write, thank you for the prompt!

Chirrut is supposed to be doing walking meditation in the gardens when he hears a set of footsteps light on the stone floors of the temple. And he is walking, but he certainly isn’t meditating, so he hears this new arrival quickly. Though it can’t be one of the elders -- the steps are too light and hesitant -- he still makes an effort to look like he’s actually meditating. This is punishment he’s been tasked, and getting caught slacking off would probably get him in even more trouble.

He hears the metal gate creak as it opens, and that’s when he hits the last stone and turns to walk back the way he came. Whoever it is who’s just arrived, they’re too far away for Chirrut to hear their reaction, but Chirrut stops in place and tilts his head towards the garden entrance, expectant.

“Sorry,” someone says -- a boy, with a deep voice. “I didn’t realize…” 

“Who are you?”

Silence for a moment, then, “Oh, right. Sorry. Baze Malbus. I don’t -- you don’t know me.”

Chirrut knows his mouth must be twisting in amusement at his visitor’s bashful apology -- he doesn’t mind; he knows it’s easy for other people to forget that he’s not sighted. “Are you here to tell Elder Jaina if I’m really meditating or not?” he asks. That’s mostly what he cares about.

“What? No.” Baze sounds -- Chirrut doesn’t know how Baze sounds. Annoyed, but confused, too, maybe. It’s hard to puzzle out the emotions in people’s voices when you don’t know them well. “Is that what you’re supposed to be doing here?”

Chirrut resumes walking, though not with the of walking meditation. Just walking. “Yes. Guardian Jaina caught me trying to sneak out during the night, and I’m to meditate here all afternoon, or at least until dinner. Is it not free period?”

This time, when Baze huffs, Chirrut is passing by closely enough to hear him. “Yes, it is.”

“Then why are you here?” 

“You’re meant to be meditating. I’ll leave you alone,” Baze says.

Chirrut sighs expansively and starts walking in the smallest possible steps, heel to toe, heel to toe. “You can stay if you want. I don’t care.”

Nothing but the sound of the wind changing directions, making all the scrubby dry bushes rattle for a moment before returning to their usual quiet rustle. Chirrut reaches the end of the meditation path, turns, and resumes walking normally, bored again. He passes by the gate again, where he assumes Baze still is, since it hadn’t creaked again, and pauses, turns his head towards where Baze might be. “Are you still here?”

“Sorry. Yes.” Baze is definitely annoyed now.

“You see,” Chirrut says, scrunching his face up, “I happen to be blind, so I can’t tell.”

“Right,” Baze says. He seems to know Chirrut is just trying to be annoying, but he’s still annoyed, which immediately endears him to Chirrut. If there’s one thing Chirrut loves, it’s someone who’s easy to rile. And for all their preachings about the Force being gentle like the air, Chirrut has found that most of them are very, very easy to rile.

“What are you here for, Baze?” That’s another thing Chirrut’s learned -- people he’s not friends with get annoyed when he uses their names all the time. So that’s most people. He doesn’t have a whole lot of friends. Not that that bothers him. He’s plenty used to running around on his own. 

“I came here to meditate, actually.”

“How boring,” Chirrut says. He starts walking again and doesn’t bother turning towards Baze to keep talking. “I was hoping you were here for something exciting, like hatching an escape plan.”

“Why would I do that?”

“The solstice celebrations are next week,” Chirrut says. “If I could, I’d sneak out to go to those. Have you ever been?”

“Of course,” Baze says, annoyed.

“Well, not everyone has.” He hits the end of the path, then turns yet again. “Maybe you’re from somewhere other than NiJedha. I don’t know what they do in other places. Maybe they don’t celebrate at all.”

Baze doesn’t respond.

“Why did you come to meditate during free period anyways? Don’t you get enough of that normally?”

“Meditation is important,” Baze says. He really sounds angry now, which is promising.

“Meditation is boring,” Chirrut says, as cheerfully as possible. He keeps walking. He reaches the end of the pathway again. He turns. He walks halfway down it again, then stops near where Baze is. “I thought I’d had you,” he says, and sighs dramatically. “An argument would be so much more interesting than this.”

“That’s why meditation is important,” Baze says. His voice is frustratingly even, like he wasn’t annoyed enough to start fighting just a minute ago. “It provides you with the self-control needed to keep you from doing things impulsively or without thinking.”

Chirrut wrinkles his nose. “You sound like an Elder.”

“I hope to be, one day,” Baze says. “So, thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“I know,” Baze says.

Chirrut starts walking again. He’s passed by Baze probably two or three times when Baze starts talking again, unprompted.

“I’ve been to the solstice celebrations. I used to pick pockets and steal things from stalls during them,” Baze says.

Chirrut is sure his face lights up, but he bites his tongue to keep from interrupting Baze. This has the feel of a story starting, and a story is far better than just Chirrut’s thoughts whirling through his head.

“I was four when I started, five or six when I got particularly good at it. Good enough I ended up in a gang of other children my age who ran errands for the older thieves who worked the markets. I started getting in fights, and usually winning.”

There’s a prospect -- maybe Baze would be a sparring partner who finally wouldn’t hold back on Chirrut, just because he was blind.

“Luckily my temper kept me from becoming too useful,” Baze says. “Since I usually won fights, I wasn’t afraid to start them. I was twelve when I nearly killed someone who double-crossed me, and my gang abandoned me, since I got caught. That was four years ago. If the Guardians hadn’t taken me in, I’d still be working on the other side of Jedha on a farm somewhere with a bunch of other petty criminals. It wasn’t until I spent time meditating that I learned to calm my temper, and now there’s something else I can do besides live and die cutting purse-strings.”

The only thing Chirrut can think to say is, “Farms aren’t that bad.”

Baze snorts at that. “Are you from a farm?”

“Yes,” Chirrut says. But that makes him think of the place that was home once. The town just far enough away from NiJedha that when the fevers hit, by the time someone came back with medicine, half of his family was dead and he woke up blind and weak and half-starved. And he doesn’t like thinking about that. So he says, “I bet you weren’t that good at fighting anyways.”

“Probably not,” Baze cedes.

“You’re probably not any good now, since you’re so good at controlling yourself,” Chirrut says. He’s searching for a weak point: he doesn’t like the way things have shifted. He wishes Baze would get annoyed again.

“Maybe,” Baze says. “Are you good at fighting?”

He sounds a little amused in a way that gets Chirrut’s hackles up. “Maybe,” Chirrut says back. “You could fight me, and then we’d know.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” Chirrut says.

“I won’t fight someone younger than me,” Baze says. Where his voice comes from has shifted a little bit. Chirrut thinks he maybe sat down on the step in front of the gate, but he’s not sure. 

“It’s just by a year,” Chirrut says. “And I’m good at zama-shiwo. I bet you’re not.”

“How are you good at zama-shiwo if you think meditation is boring?”

“You sound like an Elder again,” Chirrut says. “It’s easy. When I do zama-shiwo, I actually have something to focus on. Not like meditating.”

“That’s why Guardian Jaina has you doing walking meditation,” Baze says. “So you can focus on walking, instead of your breath.”

Chirrut is so annoyed at that that he stops in his tracks. “Walking is easy, like breathing. Fighting isn’t. You don’t need to concentrate on something easy.”

Baze hums at that. “You probably would beat me,” he says. “I won fights, but I never found them easy.”

There’s no way to explain to Baze that fighting is the easiest thing in the world if you concentrate. It’s the only reason he believes in the Force -- because when he fights someone, it’s like he feels them as an extension of himself, and he can predict what they’ll do, figure out how to counter it.

“Have you ever used a mantra?” Baze asks. “Repeated something out loud while you were trying to meditate.” 

“No. Why would I do that?” 

“I’m surprised Jaina hasn’t suggested it,” Baze says. “It makes meditating harder, like fighting instead of walking.”

“If you say so,” Chirrut says. He starts walking again, just in case Guardian Jaina shows up. And she will. He’s pretty sure that she enjoys catching him slacking, which doesn’t seem very Guardian-like to him.

“If you try meditating with a mantra, I’ll fight you,” Baze says. “I’ll get someone to referee it, so if you beat me, other people will know.”

“Deal,” Chirrut says, before he can think about it.

“You have to really try, though,” Baze says. “You can’t just pretend, like you’re doing now.”

“Fine,” Chirrut says. He’s impatient. “What do I do?”

“You can keep walking like before, but repeat a mantra while you do it. Focus on saying it. Some people find that trying to say it as fast and evenly as possible is helpful.”

“What do I say?” 

Baze hums again. “The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force.”

“That’s long,” Chirrut says, annoyed.

“It’s supposed to be tricky, not easy,” Baze says. He sounds amused again. “Try it.”

It’s a little embarrassing, repeating Baze’s words back out loud, like being corrected on a stance or chastised for throwing punches too wildly. He says it and expects Baze to say something critical about how he’s doing it wrong. Baze doesn’t say anything though, so he just repeats it, over and over again, and keeps walking.

It’s harder than he thought it would be to walk at the same time as he repeats the mantra. He almost walks past the end of the path once. He has to focus to remember what the space is like. He finds himself speeding up the mantra as he walks.

He barely notices when the door creaks again. He does notice Guardian Jaina say, “Greetings, Initiate Baze.”

“Guardian Jaina,” Baze says, deferential.

“Is this your doing, Imwe and the mantra?”

“I’m right here,” Chirrut says.

“Yes,” Baze says.

Chirrut frowns, pausing where he stands. “You know, I like this way better. The mantra.”

“Of course you found the loudest way to meditate,” Guardian Jaina says with something like affection. But there’s annoyance at the edges of her voice, too. Chirrut knows Jaina’s voice well. She’s spent a lot of time yelling at him.

That’s what makes him grin. He’s found a way to meditate that will still annoy her. “Baze says he’ll fight me,” Chirrut says.

“Did he now,” says Jaina.

He suspects Baze gestures, because Jaina just sighs at something, but in a different way than she sighs at Chirrut.

The free period is over, though, so the three of them walk to the cafeteria together. Chirrut is annoyed to realize, once he’s sitting down with a bowl of long-grain rice, that he’s in a good mood. He starts an argument with Guardian Jaina about not being allowed to visit the solstice celebrations and immediately feels better about himself.

-

One morning, Guardian Jaina comes to him while he’s doing his morning meditations. He gets to do them alone now, because no one else uses a mantra. “Baze and I are going into town to drop some things off,” she says. “You’ve been well-behaved this week. We might take the long way back, see some of the festival. You can come with us if you don’t do anything stupid.”

Chirrut is annoyed to realize that yes, he hasn’t gotten in trouble once this week, but if this is the sort of thing he gets when he makes a token effort to not piss off every Guardian and Elder he crosses paths with, maybe he can spare one week every month to act civilized.

Jaina buys them roasted fruit on sticks and cups of mulled wine, and Chirrut sits on the steps of some storefront and listens to the dancers and this time when he remembers home, it’s not so awful.

-

He does beat Baze, when they finally spar. Baze gets annoyed, which delights Chirrut, and they somehow end up in an argument about kyber that gets so raucous that an Elder shows up and tells them to shut up.

-

It takes the better part of a year for Chirrut to let himself be worn down by the temple. Maybe worn down isn’t the right way to think of it -- he doesn’t feel worse for letting the temple change him. But it’s like he was a big rock broken open, and it just took a long time for the sands to wear down the sharp edges inside of him to something that doesn’t cut anyone who touches it.

This is how he’s explaining it to Baze as they’re walking into NiJedha. It’s time again for the solstice festival, and this time Guardian Jaina let them come into town alone with a few credits tucked away in their robes.

“It’s a strong image,” Baze admits. “I just don’t like you thinking of yourself as worn down.”

“What other way could you put it?” 

“I’m thinking,” Baze says. Baze is good about that -- he never forgets that Chirrut can’t see him making a face that indicates that he’s thinking, planning a response. “I don’t know. I’m not good with metaphors like you. You were carrying a lot of pain and anger, and many people around you didn’t know what to do with that, but in time it eased.”

Sometimes it’s strange to think he’s only known Baze for a year. When Baze says things like that, he feels known down to his bones. He doesn’t realize he’s been quiet for a long time until he feels Baze’s touch at his elbow, then Baze grabbing his hand, lacing their fingers together. Baze holds his hand for a few steps, then squeezes it and lets go.

Chirrut’s heart is hammering in his chest and he doesn’t know why. “Do you think Jaina gave us enough credits to get drunk on mulled wine?” he says impulsively.

Baze groans and says, “Chirrut, no,” but Chirrut is already laughing in delight.

It doesn’t matter. He has a whole day with Baze in the city, and for some reason, he feels drunk already.


End file.
